Month: November 2011

There was little question how the NBA lockout would end, just when. The owners got the cost-slashing deal they had longed for, the players never recovered from their early negotiation give-aways, and a slightly abbreviated NBA season will be up and running by Christmas afternoon. Come May and June 2012, there will be another round of playoffs, a new NBA champion and little focus on the turbulent months that exposed the raw drive for profit on which the league — despite all its feel-good trappings — is built. The NBA is once again open for business.

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. once famously warned a litigant “This is a court of law, young man, not a court of justice.” The wisdom of the NBA Players Association’s decision Monday to dissolve the union and throw the NBA headfirst into the courts depends on the players’ ultimate goals. As a negotiating strategy to gain some — any — leverage on the owners, it makes sense and is long overdue. As an attempt to bring the lockout to a just conclusion through judicial intervention, it will likely disappoint. Savvy strategy or foolish flailing? That ultimately rests, as it did pre-dissolution, on whether the more moderate owners can wrestle control away from the NBA’s small-market hard-liners.

The NBA lockout was not meant to be covered by NBA beat writers. Putting aside the fundamental shift in subject matter — breaking down an offensive scheme is not the same thing as breaking down an offensive filing before the NLRB — the pacing and dynamics couldn’t be more different. Negotiations have no fixed rules, they follow no clock, and it’s entirely possible that both sides end up losing. In an admirable but ultimately myopic attempt to cover the lockout as a day-to-day news story, complete with highlights and box scores, many NBA writers have lost sight of the big picture: the NBA Players Association has done nothing but give ground — and a lot of it.